Executive Function Skills - Making Your Bed, Organizing Your Desk! (Chunking & Planning Over Time)

For those of us with a unique executive function profile, some things may be more difficult and draining, like organizing spaces or time management. Learning our strengths is important, as well as giving ourselves compassion to practice new skills.

Chunking can help where we have less pressure to complete tasks at once. Bite-sized pieces or even first thinking about goals can help us feel more empowered. Thinking and planning about tasks is as important as execution, and we don't always give ourselves credit for doing so.

Change involves thinking about change. Change also takes practice and small steps that add to a larger whole. Find ways that work for you, and be open to sharing your process with safe supportive people so they can also encourage you to keep going and celebrate small wins!

Executive Function Skills - External Thinking & Practice

When you have a unique or different learning style, life can be frustrating for you and the people in your life. Accomplishing tasks and learning can be met with more frustrating, overwhelm, sadness, and feelings of shame. Educators and parents, and individuals may not know what their learning preferences are and how to more effectively get tasks done. It makes sense that this is fairly new because our education system teaches the same way to benefit the same people. If you learn from lectures and using worksheets, you benefit from a typical classroom.

Others who are ADHDers, neurodivergent, smart but scattered, and creative thinkers have struggled to learn, many times in silence. They can be seen as "difficult" to teach or that they are "not trying hard enough." It is overwhelming and frustrating to think that you cannot learn due to effort. Many times, it is the approach and connection that is missing. When we seek to understand how someone's cognitive profile is, we can empower them to learn how they learn best.

And being different isn't bad. We seem to equate difference as wrong, and many differently wired people internalized this into their identities quickly. Learning and thinking differently is not bad. It is just different. Let's find ways to honor difference by being open to new information and perspective.

This video was inspired by personal experiences and watching the TEFOs 2020 conversations with Jeff Copper & Seth Perler. They are both executive function coaches with backgrounds in education. https://executivefunctionsummit.com/

Book: Smart But Scattered Guide to Success by Peg Dawson, EdD & Richard Guare, PhD

I offer coaching to the differently wired. Sometimes it takes someone to help remind you what your natural strengths are so you can identify and accomplish goals that help you cultivate your own authenticity.

Contact me at organizedmesses@gmail.com to schedule an appointment.